Other Types of Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Look Beyond Nuclear War
Written by Brendon Miller, Founder & Principal Consultant. Modified: February 22, 2025 @11:41 CET 

When you think about the worst-case scenarios that could occur globally, most people jump to catastrophic scenarios: natural disasters, nuclear meltdowns, and climate change. Other people may consider war, conflict zones, and genocide. If we step outside of practical concerns, we may imagine supernatural phenomena, such as a giant monster or zombie apocalypse. But, out of these catastrophes, war is the most persistent. Over the past decade, we’ve seen a rise in conflicts, but most have remained conventional, meaning guns, bombs, and tanks rather than apocalyptic destruction. But conventional warfare isn’t the worst type of war we can imagine. We can also imagine a large-scale nuclear conflict. The possibility of such a conflict has received a lot more media attention in recent years due to the threats of Vladimir Putin to use nukes in the Russia-Ukraine War.[1]

Nuclear Taboo and Review of Nuclear Weapons

While the threat posed by nuclear weapons and their use is incredibly troubling and dangerous, they have also entered the public consciousness and are the subject of large-scale security efforts. For instance, the multilateral Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) entered into force on the 5th of March 1970 and is an international agreement specifically designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and, notably, weapons technology.[2] In addition to limiting nuclear weapons, the agreement promotes technical assistance to the international community to promote peaceful nuclear energy. One hundred ninety countries are signatories to the treaties and observe the rules of such in most cases with a small degree of non-compliance.[3] A UN agency that implements the NPT is the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This organization acts as a watchdog to investigate, monitor, and verify that safe nuclear energy is not being misused to create nuclear weapons.[4] These international efforts, along with the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), have kept nuclear weapons in check. Even though states still pursue them,[5] their non-use is due to two key factors: first, the nuclear taboo—where countries avoid using nukes to prevent international condemnation. And second, realist concerns—because any nuclear strike risks a retaliatory response. An essential concept in nonproliferation literature is the concept of an international taboo. A taboo is a type of norm, which is never the only reason for an outcome, but in Nina Tannenwald’s words, they “shape realms of possibility.”[6]

Other Types of WMD

However, nuclear weapons are not the only kind of weapon of mass destruction. Two other types of weapons are considered capable of causing indiscriminate harm. While there is no internationally agreed-upon definition of weapons of mass destruction, the term has generally been used to refer to chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons, commonly abbreviated to CBRN.[7] However, for simplicity’s sake, we will disregard radiological weapons in this blog post due to the debate around their classification as a type of WMD. This leaves the other two major categories of WMD as chemical weapons and biological weapons of mass destruction, respectively. Similar to nuclear weapons, these weapons are the subject of international agreements, debates, and securitizations. However, they have not garnered the attention as nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons command the respect and attention of the international community and popular culture, and some of the scariest monsters that we can imagine only serve as allegories to nuclear warfare, such as Godzilla.[8] But why are chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction seemingly not held in the same infamous regard as nuclear weapons?

Chemical Weapons of Mass Destruction

To answer this question, we have to consider what makes a chemical or biological weapon, how they differ from nuclear weapons, and what’s standing in the way of their use.

Similar to nuclear weapons, chemical weapons are governed by an international treaty and taboo. In the case of chemical weapons, it is the Chemical Weapons Convention. However, the Chemical Weapons Convention can be thought of more as the little cousin of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty than its twin, rival, or counterpart. This is because CWC empowers the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons or OPCW as its implementing force instead of an established UN agency like the IAEA.[9] This comes with a notable decrease in power, as the OPCW can not perform unannounced inspections, relies on voluntary declarations, and is faced with the difficulty of defining and enforcing standards for what a chemical weapon is.[10]

If chemical weapons are similarly banned, like nuclear weapons, how do they differ? Unlike a nuclear bomb, which is instantly recognizable as a world-ending threat, chemical weapons don’t have a single, terrifying image attached to them. When you hear ‘nuke,’ you picture a massive explosion. But chemical weapons? They could be anything from a gas canister to a disguised liquid.

Nuclear weapons require more time, expertise, specialized equipment, and a large amount of highly enriched Uranium; however, this is not the case for the thousands of potential chemical weapons. Chemical weapons are often quickly produced, relatively cheap, and can be equally devastating. Still, when you think of a chemical weapon, it’s much more difficult to conjure an image with the same magnitude that you would think of when saying a “nuke.”

This discrepancy between perception and reality has to do with the way we define a chemical weapon. So, what exactly is a chemical weapon? According to the OPCW, “a Chemical Weapon is a chemical used to cause intentional death or harm through its toxic properties. Munitions, devices, and other equipment specifically designed to weaponize toxic chemicals also fall under the definition of chemical weapons.”[11] This definition is intentionally broad to avoid unlisted chemicals slipping through the cracks of regulations, and several different types of chemical families meet this definition and are regulated heavily in their usage. However, not all chemicals that meet this broad definition are listed in what is referred to as “control lists.” The chemical weapons control list is split into “schedules” that categorize the dangerousness of any chemical in the list, as well as precautions and regulations for such.

It’s important to note that many chemicals are on this scheduled control list. Many of them are commonly used by consumers and industries and, in some cases, necessary to make certain products. This means that while these chemicals have a malicious use, banning them entirely may not be an option for the millions of businesses relying on them to make their operations successful. However, some chemicals have no other purpose but to cause brutal harm to those exposed to them.

For instance, the deadly group of nerve agents known as ‘Novichok’ chemicals were used in several attempted assassinations before being added to the CWC’s schedule 1 control lists in November 2019. Novichok was infamously used in the 2018 case of Sergei Skripal - a former Russian military officer who became a British informant. He and his daughter, Yulia, were the victims of a botched assassination attempt by the Kremlin. While they both survived, they were poisoned by the nerve agent and were stuck in critical condition for a month. The incident is known as the Salisbury Poisonings.[12] Incidents like these have entered the public conscience in recent memory but have failed to have the same visceral impact that the threat of nuclear war has and, thus, must not be as taboo as nuclear weapons are. Is this due to a lack of creativity in Hollywood? Perhaps it’s necessary to develop a monster, something like Galactus in Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer, to symbolize the problems of chemical weapons. However, this still misses the mark in that chemical weapons can be both highly targeted and cause massive and indiscriminate harm.

Let’s turn to media as a means to conceptualize chemical weapons and see if there is an apparent reason why chemical weapons are not as infamous as nuclear weapons. To build upon our early example, Novichok has also been represented in fiction, such as the viral 2024 film Carry-on. The plot revolves around a TSA agent attempting to stop a criminal mastermind from detonating a chemical weapon. In the film, the weapon used is intimidating and easily imaginable, and as the movie’s name suggests, it is contained within a ‘carry-on’ bag. The stakes feel real, understandable, and, most importantly, influenceable. The hero, Agent Kopek, has a clear target, as the suitcase, and knows the stakes at play if the weapon is detonated. However, in reality, chemical weapons can look incredibly different than the intricate binary device shown in the film. They can look like barrels stowed in a warehouse, the back of a truck, or a sack of flour with ordinary packaging.

Chemical weapons in fiction demonstrate that chemical weapons must exist as taboo, but only so far as in their usage in mass casualties through large-scale usage. Because of this stigma only on widespread indiscriminate usage, countries willing to purposefully and strategically use less powerful chemical weapons can ‘get away’ with their usage.

In this way, countries can still develop, test, and sometimes even use these weapons to massive effect. Such as the Assad regime’s egregious use of chemical weapons at Ghouta.[13] While the use of chemical weapons forced the involvement of the international community, who otherwise would’ve remained neutral, the taboo was not strong enough to justify extensive action.[14] It’s easy to imagine if a nuclear device were to be detonated under the same situation, it would be all hands on deck to formulate a response.

Taken together, this means that we can place the chemical weapons taboo as relatively less taboo than the nuclear taboo, even if chemical weapons have the potential to cause mass destruction.

Biological Weapons of Mass Destruction

What about biological weapons? If chemical weapons are taboo but not to the same extent as nuclear weapons, we would expect biological weapons to follow the same pattern. However, suppose chemical weapons are less stigmatized and ‘taboo’ than nuclear weapons. In that case, biological weapons are the opposite in that they are nightmarish beyond even nuclear weapons, so much so that they have never been outright used.

This is not to say chemical weapons are not fundamentally horrific and should never be used; however, there is clear evidence that biological weapons are, in contrast to chemical weapons, only a theoretical concern because the consequences of their use would be so horrible that they are unfathomable to use in the modern era.[15]

While biological weapons have not seen large-scale modern use, biological warfare may have occurred in prehistory, with primitive hunter-gatherers using a wide variety of techniques to poison arrows with toxins or medieval armies catapulting plague victims into sieged cities.[16] The accuracy of these historical accounts is debated. Still, the fear of the cause of intentional disease is more important than the accuracy of shaky historical accounts when discussing the prevalence of biological weapons to the general public, as if the fear is too extreme, perhaps it explains the lack of public discourse surrounding bioweapons.[17]

Returning to the modern era, we all saw with the COVID-19 pandemic, the spread of viruses or infectious substances is difficult, if not impossible, to control. This uncontrollability is another reason for their lack of usage. Still, the disgust that states feel toward bioweapons leads to a lack of public infamy as they’re so outside the realm of usability that they lose their edge. In the same way, we detach from a fictional villain that seems larger than life, the public conscience has seemingly detached from the reality that biological weapons deployment could be much more terrifying than even nuclear war.

Bioweapons are indiscriminately harmful and abhorrent. The use of bioweapons is also uncontrollable to the point where the deployer is not even safe from their superweapon. To that end, bioweapons have a connotation of scorched earth, where after their use, there’s no going back, and it will indiscriminately target everyone, friend or foe. This makes bioweapons the weapons of mass destruction with the most severe psychological effects, and by being the most severe psychologically damaging weapon, it makes them the most likely route for terrorists to acquire.

Terrorists have used bioweapons in the past. Bioterrorists, such as the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan, which ended up deploying a chemical weapon, Sarin gas, initially attempted to create a biological weapons program to produce botulinum toxin, the same toxin used commonly in Botox treatment and Bacillus anthracis.[18] Another cult group, the Rajneeshees, in 1984 in a rural area east of Portland, Oregon, used Salmonella typhimurium to contaminate restaurant salad bars.[19] This led to 751 people becoming ill, 45 hospitalizations, and no fatalities. The goal of the Rajneeshees was not to cause mass killing but to incapacitate the citizens of The Dalles, Oregon, so that they could not vote in an upcoming election.

Diseases are terrifying, and their weaponization is even more so. This fundamental fear is traceable even back to biblical times. For instance, the first horseman depicted in the biblical apocalypse story is that of pestilence.[20] They are invisible until they are causing often horrific physical symptoms.[21] To imagine a large-scale bioweapon deployment, we will construct a hypothetical scenario where a biological weapon could be deployed:

Imagine one day you see on the news that a new highly infectious virus reaches epidemic levels in some low-income countries and communities. It is only flu-like symptoms that are hardly cause for concern for most people in high-income countries with access to healthcare on demand. The disease spreads over the next few months, and research toward creating a vaccine and treatments begins to ramp up. Meanwhile, a rogue scientist working late without supervision decides to genetically alter the virus to create a biological weapon, either out of curiosity, personal ambition, or under orders from an authoritarian regime. But due to negligence, greed, or even theft, a sample of the altered virus falls into the hands of a terrorist group. In a crowded subway, a group of infected extremists walk amongst the groups of people, causing a new strain of the ongoing pandemic to begin spreading globally to great effect as people have already disregarded the threat posed by the original virus.

This is just one scenario for a potential deployment of a biological weapon and one that would require several biosecurity rules to be violated and safeguards to fail. Yet, biosecurity incidents like this are theoretically possible and are at least equally terrifying to nuclear weapons deployment. Unlike a nuclear launch, which requires state-level authorization and infrastructure, a biosecurity failure can start with just one rogue scientist or disgruntled lab technician—someone who, with the right knowledge and access, could alter the course of humanity, so if preventing catastrophe requires safeguards to work perfectly every single time, the real question is:

Can we ever be 100% secure?

Probably not. But that doesn’t mean we’re doomed. Unlike nuclear weapons, which require massive infrastructure and state-level approval, biological threats are different. A single rogue actor—a scientist with the proper knowledge and the wrong intentions—could, in theory, cause a mass extinction event. And yet, despite how terrifying that sounds, biological weapons remain in the realm of theory rather than reality.

That’s not because no one has thought about using them. It’s because they are, in many ways, too effective. Unlike nuclear weapons, which are devastating but predictable, bioweapons don’t follow a controlled trajectory. They don’t stop at borders, and they don’t care who they infect. The people deploying them aren’t safe from them either. And when the potential consequences include wiping out entire populations, including your own, it’s not hard to see why no one has ever taken the risk.

But just because biological weapons haven’t been used on a large scale doesn’t mean they don’t exist. And that’s what makes them one of the scariest weapons of mass destruction because they don’t need to be fired or dropped. They can spread in ways that make them nearly impossible to contain.

With that in mind, it’s unsurprising that the international community has taken the threat seriously. The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), despite its enforcement gaps, at least establishes a clear norm against bioweapons. Given the high level of global cooperation in preventing pandemics and biosecurity threats, it seems that the horror of disease is enough to keep biological warfare in check for now.

But if we’ve learned anything from history, norms don’t always last forever. And as technology advances, so do the risks.

Conclusion

Maybe the reason nuclear weapons get all the attention isn’t just because of how destructive they are; it’s because they’re simple. A single explosion. A single mushroom cloud. Something you can point to and say, that’s what war looks like at its worst.

But what about a chemical weapon that can kill thousands without a sound? Or a bioweapon that spreads so slowly that it’s too late by the time you realize what’s happening?

Weapons of mass destruction aren’t just about explosions and fallout. They’re about the sheer scale of harm they can cause, instantly or over time. And maybe that’s the real conversation we should be having. Instead of just looking at WMDs in their traditional forms, we should be thinking about what makes a weapon a weapon of mass effect and how we’re going to deal with emerging threats in an era where destruction doesn’t always come from a bomb.[22]

If you’re interested in the real-world policy side of this—whether compliance, risk analysis, industry regulations, or turning these insights into produced content—this is exactly what I work on. Feel free to check out my website or connect with me on LinkedIn in the description and channel details.

For those who want to dig deeper into the academic side of this, I’ve linked my sources below, and I highly recommend checking out the work of Dr. Michelle Bentley, which was a huge help in researching this video.

[1] Pjotr Sauer, “Vladimir Putin Warns West He Will Consider Using Nuclear Weapons,” 2024, <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/25/vladimir-putin-warns-west-nuclear-weapons>.

[2] United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, “Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT),” <https://disarmament.unoda.org/wmd/nuclear/npt/>.

[3] Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, “Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), GOV/2003/71, 2003, <https://web.archive.org/web/20071025173821/http:/www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2003/gov2003-75.pdf>.

[4] International Atomic Energy Agency, “The IAEA and the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” <https://www.iaea.org/topics/non-proliferation-treaty>.

[5] Scott D. Sagan, “Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons?: Three Models in Search of a Bomb,” International Security, 21:3, 54-86, 1996, <http://www.jstor.org.ru.idm.oclc.org/stable/2539273>.

[6] Nina Tannenwald, “The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Normative Basis of Nuclear Non-Use,” International Organization, 53:3, 433-468, 1999, <https://dx.doi.org/10.1162/002081899550959>. p. 435.

[7] Eric Croddy, James Wirtz and Jeffrey Larsen, “Preface: Weapons of Mass Destruction,” ABC-CLIO, 2005,

[8] John Vohlidka, “Atomic Reaction: Godzilla as Metaphor for Generational Attitudes Toward the United States and the Bomb,” The Atomic Bomb in Japanese Cinema: Critical Essays, 56-67, 2015,

[9] Walter Dorn and Ann Rolya, “The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the IAEA: A comparative overview,” IAEA Bulletin, 3:1993, 1993, <https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/35301094447.pdf>.

[10] ibid

[11] Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, “What is a Chemical Weapon?,” <https://www.opcw.org/our-work/what-chemical-weapon>.

[12] Anushka Asthana, Luke Harding Roth and Ewen MacAskill, “Russian Spy Poisoning: Theresa May issues ultimatum to Moscow,” 2018, <https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/12/russia-highly-likely-to-be-behind-poisoning-of-spy-says-theresa-may>.

[13] Michelle Bentley, “The Problem With the Chemical Weapons Taboo,” Peace Review, 27:2, 228-236, 2015, <https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10402659.2015.1037634>; and Michelle Bentley, “Syria and the Chemical Weapons Taboo: Exploiting the Forbidden,” New Approaches to Conflict Analysis, Manchester University Press, 2016,

[14] Bentley, “Syria and the Chemical Weapons Taboo: Exploiting the Forbidden,” New Approaches to Conflict Analysis, Manchester University Press, 2016.

[15] Michelle Bentley, The Biological Weapons Taboo, Oxford University Press,  2023,

[16] W. Seth Carus, “A Short History of Biological Warfare: From Pre-History to the 21st Century,” National Defense University Press, 2017, <https://purl.fdlp.gov/GPO/gpo84132>.

[17] ibid

[18] Carus, “A Short History of Biological Warfare: From Pre-History to the 21st Century,” National Defense University Press, 2017; and Rin Ushiyama, “Aum Shinrikyō and Religious Terrorism in Japanese Collective Memory,” Oxford University Press, 2023, <https://doi.org/10.5871/bacad/9780197267370.001.0001>.

[19] W. Seth Carus, “Bioterrorism and Biocrimes: The Illicit Use of Biological Agents Since 1900,” Center for Counterproliferation Research National Defense University, 2001, <http://cdm21069.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/ppl1/id/407751>.

[20] Brian Stableford, The A to Z of Fantasy Literature, Scarecrow Press,  2009,

[21] Michelle Bentley, “The Biological Weapons Taboo: A “New” Focus for Arms Control,” Disincentivizing Bioweapons, 103, 2024,

[22] Bowman H. Miller, “From WMD to WME: An Ever-Expanding Threat Spectrum,” Journal of Strategic Security, 8:3, 110-122, 2015, <http://www.jstor.org/stable/26465250>.